Thumos is a Greek word that we often translate as "spiritedness" or "passion." It implies a spirit of contention or fight, like having a beer with your buddy and loudly insisting that Dylan was cooler than the Beatles. This is an excuse for spirited posts that follow my more or (often) less disciplined passions.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Pat Buchanan is a little confused. He starts out, rightly praising Bush for speaking the truth about post-WWII oppression of Central Europe. Then he goes to the extreme of calling World War II a failure because Stalin was not removed from power and the Poles merely had traded oppressors. Read more . . .The weirdest quote:

True, U.S. and British troops liberated France, Holland and Belgium from Nazi occupation. But before Britain declared war on Germany, France, Holland and Belgium did not need to be liberated. They were free. They were only invaded and occupied after Britain and France declared war on Germany – on behalf of Poland.

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.

Huh? Not only does Buchanan doubt that Iraq was worthwhile, he doubts that World War II was worthwhile. It's not clear if he feels that sacrificing Poland would have preserved peace, so that accommodating Hitler would have been the prudent course. I'd like to see him try to argue that. This is crazy talk.

Maybe he's only saying that the war was fought to liberate Poland, but Poland wasn't liberated. True. Also exceedingly academic and irrelevant. Poland eventually was liberated, in part through the efforts of the U.S. and U.K. In this light, the Cold War can be seen as an extension of World War II, a series of full-scale wars, standoffs, proxy wars, espionage, and tensions that resulted in the destruction of fascism, national socialism, and international communist socialism.